Western Digital has announced a pair of major breakthroughs in NAND flash technology. The company is claiming it will commercialize 96-layer 3D NAND next year, and that it has found a way to build NAND that can store up to four bits of data per cell.

Micron is launching a new set of enterprise SSDs with flexible provisioning and 32 layers of TLC NAND. The gains and improvements of moving to TLC are large enough that we may well see more companies taking this step.

NAND prices are expected to jump in Q4 2016 thanks to increased demand for flash-based storage on PC laptops. If you’re planning to buy an SSD for Christmas we recommend pulling the trigger sooner rather than later.

Transcend is prepping a new type of MLC NAND it’s dubbed “SuperMLC.” The company wants to combine the high reliability and performance of single-level cell NAND memory with the low cost and economies of scale that exist around traditional multi-level cell flash.

NAND flash had some hiccups this year, with a number of issues and concerns related to best practices and enterprise deployments. These problems, however, largely represent growing pains — not the end of the industry as some have claimed.

Micron has announced that it intends to offer a 16nm TLC NAND for consumer SSDs starting this fall. After the troubles Samsung has had and with 3D NAND already ramping, it’s not clear where the company will market the new drives.

Intel and Micron have announced the launch of a new 3D NAND flash technology, one which could substantially improve the amount of data storage possible in Macs, iPhones, iPads, and numerous other devices.

IBM’s new Project Theseus shows promise and may be capable of replacing NAND altogether in the long term. Vastly higher performance and better write endurance could make this technology the next big thing in storage — provided someone agrees to manufacture it.